evident (see A. 2). A more purely Italian vein—the historical explanation of which presents an attractive problem—has ultimately gained the mastery and determined the “Venetian” type which has since diffused itself so vigorously.—In the Venetian, then, we do not find the most distinctive characteristics of the dialects of Upper Italy comprised under the denomination Gallo-Italic (see B. 1),—neither the ü nor the ö, nor the velar[1] and faucal nasals, nor the Gallic resolution of the ct, nor the frequent elision of unaccented vowels, nor the great redundancy of pronouns. On the contrary, the pure Italian diphthong of ṍ (e.g. cuór) is heard, and the diphthong of ế is in full currency (diéśe, dieci, &c.). Nevertheless the Venetian approaches the type of Northern Italy, or diverges notably from that of Central Italy, by the following phonetic phenomena: the ready elision of primary or secondary d (crúo, crudo; séa, seta, &c.); the regular reduction of the surd into the sonant guttural (e.g. cuogo, Ital. cuoco, coquus); the pure ć in the resolution of cl (e.g. ćave, clave; oréća, auricula); the ś for ģ (śóvene, Ital. giovane); ç for š and ć (péçe, Ital. pesce; çiél, Ital. cielo). Lj preceded by any vowel, primary or secondary, except i, gives ģ: faméga, familia. No Italian dialect is more averse than the Venetian to the doubling of consonants.—In the morphology the use of the 3rd singular for the 3rd plural also, the analogical participle in esto (taśesto, Ital. taciuto, &c.; see Arch. iv. 393, sqq.) and śe, Lat. est, are particularly noteworthy. A curious double relic of Ladin influence is the interrogative type represented by the example crédis-tu, credis tu,—where apart from the interrogation ti credi would be used. For other ancient sources relating to Venice, the estuary of Venice, Verona and Padua, see Arch. i. 448, 465, 421-422; iii. 245-247. [Closely akin to Venetian, though differing from it in about the same degree that the various Gallo-Italian dialects differ among one another, is the indigenous dialect of Istria, now almost entirely ousted by Venetian, and found in a few localities only (Rovigno, Dignano). The most salient characteristics of Istrian can be recognized in the treatment of the accented vowels, and are of a character which recalls, to a certain extent at least, the Vegliote dialect. Thus we have in Istrian i for ệ (bivi, Ital. bevi, Lat. bĭbis; tila, Ital. tḛla; viro, Ital. vero and vetro, Lat. vēru, vĭtru; nito, Ital. netto, Lat. nĭtĭdu, &c.) and analogously u for ǫ (fiur, Ital. fiore, Lat. flōre; bus, Ital. voce, Lat. vōce, &c.); ei and ou from the Lat. ī and ū respectively (ameigo, Lat. amicu, feil, Lat. fīlu, &c.; mour, Lat. mūru; noudu, Lat. nūdu; frouto, Ital. frutto, Lat. frūctu, &c.); ie and uo from ĕ and ŏ respectively in position (piel, Lat. pĕlle, mierlo, Ital. merlo, Lat. mĕrula; kuorno, Lat. cŏrnu; puorta, Lat. pŏrta), a phenomenon in which Istrian resembles not only Vegliote but also Friulian. The resemblance with Verona, in the reduction of final unaccented -e to o should also be noted (nuoto, Ital. notte, &c., bivo, Ital. beve; malamȩntro, Ital. malamente, &c.), and that with Belluno and Treviso in the treatment of -óni, -áni (barbói, -oin, Ital. barboni), though it is peculiar to Istrian that -ain should give -ȩṅ (kaṅ, kȩṅ, Ital. cane -i). With regard to consonants, we should point out the n for gn (líno, Ital. legno); and as to morphology, we should note certain survivals of the inflexional type, amita, -ánis (sing. sía, Ital. zia, pl. siaṅne).] The most ancient Venetian documents take us back to the first half of the 13th century (v. E. Bertanza and V. Lazzarini, Il Dialetto veneziano fino alla morte di Dante Alighieri, Venice, 1891), and to the second half of the same century seems to belong the Saibante MS. For Verona we have also documents of the 13th century (v. Cipolla, in Archivio storico italiano, 1881 and 1882); and to the end of the same century perhaps belongs the MS. which has preserved for us the writings of Giacomino da Verona. See also Archivio glottologico, i. 448, 465, 421-422, iii. 245-247.
2. Corsican[2]—If the “Venetian,” in spite of its peculiar “Italianity,” has naturally special points of contact with the other dialects of Upper Italy (B. 1), the Corsican in like manner, particularly in its southern varieties, has special points of contact with Sardinian proper (B. 2). In general, it is in the southern section of the island, which, geographically even, is farthest removed from Tuscany, that the most characteristic forms of speech are found. The unaccented vowels are undisturbed; but u for the Tuscan o is common to almost all the island,—an insular phenomenon par excellence which connects Corsica with Sardinia and with Sicily, and indeed with Liguria also. So also -i for the Tuscan -e (latti, latte; li cateni, le catene), which prevails chiefly in the southern section, is also found in Northern and Southern Sardinian, and is common to Sicily. It is needless to add that this tendency to u and i manifests itself, more or less decidedly, also within the words. Corsican, too, avoids the diphthongs of ế and ṍ (pe, eri; cori, fora): but, unlike Sardinian, it treats ḯ and ṹ in the Italian fashion: beju, bibo; péveru, piper; pesci; noci, nuces.[3]—It is one of its characteristics to reduce a to e in the formula ar + a consonant (chérne, bérba, &c.), which should be compared particularly with the Piedmontese examples of the same phenomenon (Arch. ii. 133, 144-150). But the gerund in -endu of the first conjugation (turnendu, lagrimendu, &c.) must on the contrary be considered as a phenomenon of analogy, as it is especially recognized in the Sardinian dialects, to all of which it is common (see Arch. ii. 133). And the same is most probably the case with forms of the present participle like merchente, mercante, in spite of enzi and innenzi (anzi, innanzi), in which latter forms there may probably be traced the effect of the Neo-Latin i which availed to reduce the t of the Latin ante; alongside of them we find also anzi and nantu. But cf. also, grȩndi, Ital. grande. In Southern Corsican dr for ll is conspicuous—a phenomenon which also connects Corsica with Sardinia, Sicily and a good part of Southern Italy (see C. 2; and Arch. ii. 135, &c.), also with the northern coast of Tuscany, since examples such as beḍḍu belong also to Carrara and Montignoso. In the Ultramontane variety occur besides, the phenomena of rn changed to r (= rr) and of nd becoming nn (furu, Ital. forno; koru, Ital. corno; kuannu, Ital. quando; vidennu, Ital. vedendo). The former of these would connect Corsican with Sardinian (corru, cornu; carre, carne, &c.); the latter more especially with Sicily, &c. A particular connexion with the central dialects is given by the change of ld into ll (kallu, Ital. caldo).—As to phonetic phenomena connected with syntax, already noticed in B. 2, space admits the following examples only: Cors, na vella, una bella, e bella (ebbélla, et bella); lu jallu, lo gallo, gran ghiallu; cf. Arch. ii. 136 (135, 150), xiv. 185. As Tommaseo has already noted, -one is for the Corsicans not less than for the Sicilians, Calabrians and the French a termination of diminution: e.g. fratedronu, fratellino.—In the first person of the conditional the b is maintained (e.g. farebe, farei), as even at Rome and elsewhere. Lastly, the series of Corsican verbs of the derivative order which run alongside of the Italian series of the original order, and may be represented by the example dissipeghja, dissipa (Falcucci), is to be compared with the Sicilian series represented by cuadiari, riscaldare, curpiári, colpire (Arch. ii. 151).
3. Dialects of Sicily and of the Neapolitan Provinces.—Here the territories on both sides of the Strait of Messina will first be treated together, chiefly with the view of noting their common linguistic peculiarities.—Characteristic then of these parts, as compared with Upper Italy and even with Sardinia, is, generally speaking, the tenacity of the explosive elements of the Latin bases (cf. Arch. ii. 154, &c.). Not that these consonants are constantly preserved uninjured; their degradations, and especially the Neapolitan degradation of the surd into the sonant, are even more frequent than is shown by the dialect as written, but their disappearance is comparatively rather rare; and even the degradations, whether regard be had to the conjunctures in which they occur or to their specific quality, are very different from those of the dialects of Upper Italy. Thus, the t between vowels ordinarily remains intact in Sicilian and Neapolitan (e.g. Sicil. sita, Neap. seta, seta, where in the dialects of Upper Italy we should have seda, sea); and in the Neapolitan dialects it is reduced to d when it is preceded by n or r (e.g. viendę, vento), which is precisely a collocation in which the t would be maintained intact in Upper Italy. The d, on the other hand, is not resolved by elision, but by its reduction to r (e.g. Sicil. víriri, Neap. dialects veré, vedere), a phenomenon which has been frequently compared, perhaps with too little caution, with the d passing into rs (ḍ) in the Umbrian inscriptions. The Neapolitan reduction of nt into nd has its analogies in the reduction of nc (nk) into ng, and of mp into mb, which is also a feature of the Neapolitan dialects, and in that of ns into nź; and here and there we even find a reduction of nf into mb (nf, nv, nb, mb), both in Sicilian and Neapolitan (e.g. at Casteltermini in Sicily ’mbiernu, inferno, and in the Abruzzi cumbonn’, ’mbonn’, confondere, infondere). Here we find ourselves in a series of phenomena to which it may seem that some special contributions were furnished by Oscan and Umbrian (nt, mp, nc into nd, &c.), but for which more secure and general, and so to say “isothermal,” analogies are found in modern Greek and Albanian. The Sicilian does not appear to fit in here as far as the formulae nt
- ↑ [There are also examples of Istrian variants, such as laṅna, Ital. lana; kadeṅna, Ital. catena.]
- ↑ [There have been of late years many different opinions concerning the classification of Corsican. Meyer-Lübke dissociates it from Italian, and connects it with Sardinian, making of the languages of the two islands a unit independent of the Romance system. But even he (in Gröber’s Grundriss, 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 698) recognized that there were a number of characteristics, among them the participle in -utu and the article illu, closely connecting Sassari and Corsica with the mainland. The matter has since then been put in its true light by Guarnerio (Arch. glott. xvi. 510 et seq.), who points out that there are two varieties of language in Corsica, the Ultramontane or southern, and the Cismontane, by far the most widely spread, in the rest of the island. The former is, it is true, connected with Sardinian, but with that variety, precisely, which, as we have already seen, ought to be separated from the general Sardinian type. Here we might legitimately assume a North-Sardinian and South-Corsican type, having practically the same relation to Italian as have the Gallo-Italian dialects. As to the Cismontane, it has the Tuscan accented vowel-system, does not alter ll or rn, turns lj into ĩ (Ital. gli), and shares with Tuscan the peculiar pronunciation of ć between vowels, while, together with many of the Tuscan and central dialects, it reduces rr to a single consonant. For these reasons, Guarnerio is right in placing the Cismontane, as Ascoli does for all the Corsican dialects, on the same plane as Umbrian, &c.]
- ↑ The Ultramontane variety has, however, tela, pilu, iḍḍu, boći, gula, furu, corresponding exactly to the Gallurese tela, pilu, Ital. pelo, iḍḍu; Ital. “ello,” Lat. illu; bǫci, Ital. voce; gula, Ital. gole.
